A Clock is Not A Clock In the Hands of Ahmed: Exposing Policies of Islamophobia, School to Prison Pipeline, and Institutional Bullying

September 17, 2015

On Monday September 14th 2015 in Irving, Texas, 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed, a Sudanese-Muslim 9th grader of MacArthur High School was arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school. While many are rightly focusing on the anti-Muslim bigotry that led to Ahmed’s targeting, we cannot afford to miss the larger systems and policies in which this case is rooted, namely the School to Prison Pipeline, anti-Black racism, institutional forms of bullying, and national policies promoting Islamophobia.

We have seen how youth have been racialized in ways that reflect the systems of oppression that impact them – mass criminalization and incarceration, immigration, homophobia, transphobia, etc. Similarly, racialized perceptions of Muslim students have been formed by decades of discriminatory policies, such as surveillance and racial profiling at home, and foreign policies and militarism abroad. National security programs, such as CVE-Countering Violent Extremism, are predicated on assumptions of radicalization of Muslim youth, and then promoted amongst law enforcement, public education, and social service governmental agencies. With such policies in place, Ahmed’s identity as a young Black, Arab, and Muslim student, shapes how the very object, a homemade clock, is perceived, despite Ahmed’s protests and the clear physical evidence to the contrary. A clock is no longer a clock if in the hands of a student like Ahmed.

We also take note, that while the White House, and many of our own communities have taken initiative on addressing bullying behavior of students experienced by Arab, Muslim, South Asian, Sikh, and Asian communities, there are multiple forms of institutionalized bullying by authority figures within schools, which are made invisible and therefore never held accountable. The repeated harassment of Ahmed, and sarcastic remarks to his clear explanations by teachers, administrators and police officers are not acknowledged as bullying in conversations about school culture and climate. This is what bullying, criminalization and systemic racism looks like for millions of young people of color in their everyday experiences at schools.

Ahmed’s experience is a lesson for the White House and schools across the US. As this is not an isolated case,the solution is not an invitation to the White House nor the continuation of programs and policies that provide official sanction and legitimacy to social bigotry. We have to examine and change the existing policies that would escalate an expression of ingenuity to a case of school discipline, policing, and national security. A clear way for such change, is to shift our priorities for how we allocate resources, away from harsh discipline, policing, and militarism, and towards public education, restorative justice, community building, and conflict resolution, so that young people have a healthy school environment where all youth are embraced in the fullness of their beings. Nobody will do this for us, and we must continue to organize our communities to make it happen.